One woman's struggle for the drug that could save her life

When we read the plight of Andrea Sloan on HuffPost this week, we decided that you might want to know about it too.

Sloan has been fighting ovarian cancer for seven years by undergoing five surgeries, multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, and even a stem cell transplant. Now she is seeking help from the drug company BioMarin, who is in development of a drug, BMN-673, that could help fight the disease that consumes her.

BMN-673 could possibly target Sloan’s cancer cells while leaving her healthy ones in tact, but the drug has not been approved by the FDA and that’s where things have gotten complicated. BMN-673 needs to go through clinical trials still but technically BioMarin could allow Sloan to take the drug. Pharmaceutical companies can allow a patient to use an experimental drug that the FDA hasn’t approved—which BMN-673 is—when no other options are available under what’s called a compassionate use exemption.

Sloan and her doctor believe that BMN-673 is her last hope and, according to her last doctor’s appointment, she may have only two weeks to get it in her system.

Sloan’s family and friends have taken to the Internet to launch a campaign to apply pressure to BioMarin to allow her to use the experimental drug. If you want to help, you can sign the online petition or join “Andi’s Army" on Facebook. To read the full account of the situation, here is the HuffPost article.